PORT HAWKESBURY: The vote was far from unanimous as town councillors here adopted a budget that will once again hold the line on tax rates while making an official commitment towards a major overhaul of Reeves Street.
An often-heated 35-minute discussion preceded a 3-2 vote in favour of the 2017-18 Port Hawkesbury municipal budget, which once again sets the residential tax rate at $1.82 per $100 of assessment, with the commercial rate also unchanged at $4.38 per $100 of assessment. These rates are unchanged from the previous two town budgets.
In presenting budget highlights to last week’s regular town council meeting at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre’s Shannon Studio, the town’s Director of Finance, Erin MacEachern, touted higher budgets for road and street maintenance to improve such items as bridge infrastructure, as well as increases in spending for trails, parks and playgrounds and a commitment of $460,000 towards the Destination Reeves Street initiative.
However, the role of MacEachern and town staff in crafting this year’s budget was criticized by town council members Hughie MacDougall and Mark MacIver, who each insisted that the four budget meetings held between April 20 and the June 13 regular council meeting date did not give councillors enough time to properly review the various budget items.
“This is my seventeenth budget, and I’ve seen 10 meetings, sometimes more, to get it done,” MacDougall declared.
MacIver also told the meeting that this year’s budget process ran counter to Nova Scotia’s Municipal Government Act in removing the traditional role of councillors in creating a budget and placing that responsibility in the hands of MacEachern and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Terry Doyle.
“We don’t create the budget, but… we’ll set out what’s in the budget, or what we want, and then it would go to the finance director to balance the budget,” MacIver insisted.
Deputy Mayor Trevor Boudreau and councillor Jeremy White dismissed these comments, suggesting that MacEachern and Doyle had carried out their responsibilities and given council members “ample time” to review the fiscal document for the coming year.
“We’ve been at this for several months,” Boudreau noted. “I was very comfortable looking at it and very comfortable seeing where the money was going. If you were uncomfortable with anything, the opportunity was there [during budget deliberations].”
Mayor Brenda Chisholm-Beaton, who joined Boudreau and White in voting to pass the budget, challenged MacIver’s assertion that the current method of developing Port Hawkesbury’s budget leaves no room for councillors to air their views or concerns.
“It’s 2017,” Chisholm-Beaton told MacIver at one point. “During the four very long budget meetings that we had, why did you not bring up your concerns at that time?”
Doyle, who suggested that “there was very little feedback” from individual councillors during this spring’s budget meetings, defended the process that led to the town’s 2017-18 financial plan.
“For the first time in a very long time, we have a complete capital project list, and that long-term capital project list included the replacement of vehicles, it looked at buildings, it looked at recreational grounds, it looked at all of those things,” the CAO told MacDougall.
“You were given that capital list, you were asked to review it, and it was reviewed by staff. And after four meetings, we really thought there was an understanding around that list.”